Community Service Modelling

As a longtime neighbor of Tufts, the host to the National and State Campus Compacts, sponsor of the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, it’s fascinating to see how remarkably provincial a leading university’s concept of community impact can be. Tufts hosts both the PACE Center — which challenges the narrow measures of SAT/defined student learning quite effectively — and the Positive Deviance Institute — which demonstrates a remarkable sensitivity to building new capacity for community change from successful, but unrecognized local innovation. Yet neither of these superb intellectual and academic capacities have had any outlet whatsoever in the communities immediately adjacent to academe. Instead, the university is known for it’s biotesting and drunken undergraduates.

That town-gown contrast — also marked by your report, last month, of the lowest graduation rate in this Congressional District, which has the highest number of undergraduate residents of any in the nation — ought to have caught SOME institutional researcher interest, SOMEWHERE.

Joe Beckmann, at 7:55 am EDT on July 22, 2008

Tick-tock, people

Bad news for the “academic freedom and tenure do not include monitoring and evaluating my performance” crowd. There’s this thing called the Internet. Students and their families use it to communicate about your performance (e.g., Rate My Professor). De facto, faculty performance and outcomes are being evaluated.

IMO, that’s how some colleges get “hot” — and others that ought to close their doors, frankly. The “hot” ones have faculty who are relevant, engaged, and accountable.

To quote the poet C. Carter: “The truth is out there.” And students know how to find it.

L.L., at 9:50 am EDT on July 22, 2008

“IMO, that’s how some colleges get “hot” — and others that ought to close their doors, frankly. The “hot” ones have faculty who are relevant, engaged, and accountable.

To quote the poet C. Carter: “The truth is out there.” And students know how to find it.”

Thanks for your enlightenment. I was wondering how Sanjay managed to last so long on “American Idol".

So lets see, we ask students, who have not mastered the subject matter yet, and who have never taught a course to evaluate the effectiveness of faculty.

What they are really evaluating is how well they were able to learn concepts and their interest level in the subject matter, which is a measure of themselves not the teacher.. Or perhaps how well they “like” the instructor.

Kind of like asking a virgin to evaluate how well a pregnant women delivered her child.

Lets put the cart before the horse. Does logic not count for anything anymore?

dundermifflin, at 11:15 am EDT on July 22, 2008

Regarding the comments by DFS and CTS about SACS requirements — I don’t believe you are correct in saying that SACS has strict, uniform requirments on syllabi, etc. Check SACS accreditation standards and policies at www.sacscoc.org and see if you can really find such requirements. TEB

TEB, at 4:20 pm EDT on July 22, 2008

RMP is not only evaluation tool

” .. do you seriously think Rate My Professor is an adequate measure ..? It’s a (rather poor) measure .. at best.”

First — who said RMP is the only evaluation tool used by students and their families? It was cited as just o-n-e example.

Second — IMO, RMP’s quality depends on the number of respondents and number of outliers. I’ve checked a few colleagues on RMP — brutally honest.

Ignore the public at thy peril. Great peril.

BTW: it is S-a-n-j-a-y-a. Ten points marked-off for spelling error.

L.L., at 7:35 pm EDT on July 22, 2008

You are right, TEB

My apologies. I hyperventilated about SACS re syllabi. I should have made it clear that it is my institution who is in the process of developing such uniformity in anticipation of SACS review, not the SACS guidelines per se.

I am bemoaning this slow but steady march to micromanaged grading measures in the class. In a developmental class, I believe that a student should be allowed to “develop.” This means that some earlier stumbles can be ignored, as long as true development to standards indeed took place.

I agree with the remark that a virgin cannot speak intelligently about how well another delivered a baby. All the student can do is remark about what the student understands. An open-door policy throughout one’s chain of command should be sufficient to address any real problem with the way the class was conducted.

On a more macro-level, grade distributions should suffice to assess an institution’s “performance.”

We can all improve, but must we do so by the delicate caress of a sledge-hammer?

Again, my apologies to all.

DFS, at 9:40 am EDT on July 23, 2008

DFS, you would be right about grade distributions if grades were really a true reflection of student mastery. However, they are not and cannot be without clear, transparent, public rubrics for what constitutes an A, B, etc. Instead, student grades are inflated for a variety of reasons (e.g., for “effort,” to improve faculty evaluations for tenure and promotions, and to reduce student and parent complaints to professors and dean). For those who grade on a curve (the complete lack of well-defined, clear standards for mastery if ever there was one), a theoretical curve is applied to a small population that probably isn’t bell-shaped. For these reasons, grades are imperfect indicators of how well students are learning and how well professors are teaching. Any other assessment process that can be implemented will be imperfect as well. However, one would hope they would be better than simple grade distributions because disciplinary standards would be clear, well-defined, and public.

IHE Reader, at 10:10 am EDT on July 23, 2008

Sad News for IR — You are not in charge of assessment!

It is worth considering this article from a different perspective with respect to authority and responsibility. IR directors are actually rarely, not usually, responsible for learning assessment. This important part of teaching and learning is always a faculty responsibility and it is guided by the same principles of higher education. I have never heard of university faculty reporting to an IR director instead of a dean. As such, the IR director is, at its best, a colleague, consultant and advisor — but never the person who answers for learning assessment and certainly not the one who is “caught in between.” I work with faculty and oordinate and assist in the learning assessment process. It is a daunting task for us to respond constructively and in a balanced way to this important challenge and the principles of “standards,” given that we are faced with unending mantras demanding constant and ever-growing IMPROVEMENTS without regard for whether ceaseless improvement is needed in every course, every term, every year. I work with extremely well-motivated faculty who want the best for their students. Our greatest challenges are (a) the added workload of assessment, and (b) the critics of faculty who fail to put this work in a context. I salute all faculty who are taking this challenge seriously and there are many who can be so acknowledged.

Nancy Hedlund, Assoc VP Planning & Assessment at Hawai’i Pacific University, at 5:40 am EDT on July 27, 2008